HOW TO REDUCE MOBILE DATA

With unlimited data plans disappearing faster than the rainforests and data consumption on the rise, cherishing every MB is becoming standard practice. So what if I told you that you could cut your mobile data usage in half in less than a minute? It's easier than you might think. Just follow these five steps to use less mobile data on Android. Battery-killing crimes you need to stop Signs you're addicted to your smartphone Note: Of course individual data savings will vary, but using these five steps literally cut my data usage in half. Feel free to adapt these tips for the specific apps you use the most or your particular usage habits. Compressing Chrome pages can have some huge data savings. / © ANDROIDPIT 1. Compress Chrome pages Assuming you use Chrome for all your web traffic, this tip alone can save you 30-35 percent of your mobile browser data consumption. Compressing Chrome pages, now know as Data Saver in the settings, compresses web pages before loading them in your browser. Using Data Saver does slow things down a tiny bit, but you quickly get used to it and a moment's delay is worth it when your data lasts so much longer. Just launch Chrome, tap the three dots in the top right hand corner, go down to Settings and then to Data Saver. Keep an eye on the graph every now and then to see your data savings grow. Three taps to a third less data consumption in Chrome. / © ANDROIDPIT 2. Ditch the Facebook app It's pretty well known among Android aficionados that Facebook is one of the worst contributors not only to data consumption, but also to resource usage and battery drain. That thing is just always chewing up the stuff you want more of on your phone. So why not replace it with something less demanding? Even Facebook Lite uses lots of mobile data. So why not try a web app or Chrome shortcut? / © ANDROIDPIT There's lots of alternative Facebook apps but many of those are just as hungry as the official version. Even Facebook Lite, which claims to reduce data consumption by 50 percent, still chews through hundreds of MB of data in a month. So why not try Tinfoil for Facebook, which is simply a web app that displays the Facebook website (you can still get push notifications by using IFTTT and Pushbullet). Or simply create a Chrome shortcut in your web browser. Just open Facebook in Chrome, open the overflow menu and select Add to Home Screen. Using Tinfoil or a Chrome shortcut to Facebook will save heaps of data. / © ANDROIDPIT 3. Restrict background data The easiest way to save data is to tell your apps (or the Android system itself) to restrict background data. Background data is all that internet traffic that goes on when you're not actually using an app: things like email syncing, feeds updating, weather widgets and more. Restricting background data and syncing of accounts is good for data. / © ANDROIDPIT You can also tell the Android system to restrict background data in Settings > Data usage > Restrict Background Data or for individual apps in Settings > Apps (depending on which version of Android you have). You can also change your sync settings for Google services in Settings > Accounts > Google > select the account and then un-check the services you don't want syncing automatically. 4. Disable auto-updating apps Another huge drain of your data allowance comes from the occasional bout of Google Play app updating. If you've got the Play Store set to auto-update apps, even over data connection, this could be chewing its way through your allowance every month without you even knowing. Don't let apps auto-update on your data connection. / © ANDROIDPIT To check, go to the Play Store and swipe out the left-hand navigation drawer. Tap Settings and at the top you'll see Auto-Update Apps. Tap this and make sure you either have it set to ''Do Not Auto-Update Apps'' or only over Wi-Fi. To manage individual apps, go to My Apps, select an app and then tap the overflow menu to check or un-check Auto-Update. 5. Put some music on your phone Streaming services like YouTube, Spotify, Vine and other video and music sites are huge data killers. If there's a tune or album you're constantly listening to at the gym or on the way to work, you're much better off just loading it onto your phone and listening to it offline than endlessly streaming it from the web. Even without a microSD card slot you can still use a microSD adapter. / © ANDROIDPIT If you don't have a microSD card on your phone or are otherwise unable to free up too much space, you can always save music for offline listening too. It won't be as large as if you copied the album to your phone and it's easy to get rid of or replace. Trust me, if you can curb your streaming cravings, even a little, you'll see a huge reduction in data consumption. 6. Identify and limit/remove high consuming apps In Settings > Data usage you can get a look at the apps which are consuming the most data both in the foreground and the background. This can be really useful for knowing which apps you should restrict. Take Gmail, for example. On my phone it has downloaded 451 MB of emails in the background – what if I don't even use the app? This is a scenario where you could simply remove the app, limit how often it syncs or prevent it from downloading attachments to reduce data consumption.  Does the Gmail app warrant 451 MB of data consumption in a month? / © ANDROIDPIT 7. Navigate offline Google maps can use up quite a bit of your mobile data if you're not careful, but thankfully it is possible to use Google Maps offline. Follow our guide and see how much data you could save. Furthermore, why not try one of our favorite offline Android games to use less data while you get your game on?  How do you manage your mobile data usage? Any other great tips to share? Read Source

How to bypass Android’s lock screen pattern, PIN or password

The main reason to set up some sort of lock screen security on your smartphone is to keep strangers (or friends) from checking out your messages or private pictures. Beyond that, you don’t want anyone who dares to steal your phone to get full access to your mails, pictures or other sensitive data. But what if you’re the one who cannot access your phone? You could forget your PIN or pattern, right? Or someone pranks you by setting up a lock screen pattern and just leaves you struggling with it.

In any case, there’s quite an easy solution to this without smashing your phone against a wall (or your friend’s face). The only thing you need is to have Android Device Manager enabled on your device (before you locked yourself out of your phone). If you have a Samsung phone, you can also unlock your phone using your Samsung account.

Forgot your Android lock screen pattern, PIN or password? Here’s what to do

I tested the following methods using a lock screen pattern, PIN and password and was able to unlock my LG G2 with Android 4.4.2 successfully.

Unlock your Android device using Android Device Manager (ADM)

As already mentioned, the following method only applies to devices that have Android Device Manager enabled.

1. On a computer or other mobile phone, visit: google.com/android/devicemanager
2. Sign in using your Google login details that you also used on your locked phone.
3. In the ADM interface, select the device you need to unlock (if it isn’t already selected).
4. Select ‘Lock’
5. In the appearing window, enter a temporary password. You don’t have to enter a recovery message. Now click ‘Lock’ again.
6. If it was successful, you should see a confirmation below the box with the buttons Ring, Lock and Erase.
7. On your phone you should now see a password field in which you should enter the temporary password. This should unlock your phone.
8. Now, before you go on with your life, go to your phone’s lock screen settings and disable the temporary password.
9. That’s it!

Unlock your Android lock screen pattern with your Google Login (only Android 4.4 and below)

If you haven’t updated your firmware to Android Lollipop (5.0), then there’s a faster way to unlock a lock screen pattern.

1. Enter a wrong lock screen pattern five times (shouldn’t be hard if you don’t remember the correct one)
2. Select ‘Forgot Pattern’
3. Now you should be able to enter a backup PIN or your Google account login.
4. Enter either your backup PIN or your Google login.
5. Your phone should now be unlocked.

Bypass your Samsung phone’s lock screen using its Find My Mobile tool

This is an easy way to unlock your Samsung device if you created a Samsung account and registered it beforehand.

1. Go to Samsung Find My Mobile.
2. Sign in using your Samsung login details.
3. In the Find My Mobile account interface you should see your registered phone on the left hand side. This tells you that you’re phone is registered to that account.
4. On the left sidebar, select ‘Unlock my screen’.
5. Now select ‘Unlock’ and wait for a few seconds for the process to finish.
6. You should get a notification window telling you that your screen is unlocked.
7. That’s it. Your phone should be unlocked.

Disable your lock screen using custom recovery and “Pattern Password Disable” (SD card needed)

This method is for more advanced Android users that know what the terms “rooting” and “custom recovery” mean. As the title says, for this to work you need any kind of custom recovery installed and your phone must have an SD card slot. Why the SD card? Well, we need to transfer a ZIP file to your phone and that’s usually not possible when it’s locked. The only way is to insert an SD card with the file.Unfortunately, card slots became kind of a rare thing in the smartphone world, so this will only work for some people.
Here’s what you need to do:

1. Download the Pattern Password Disable ZIP file on your computer and put it on an SD card.
2. Insert the SD card into your phone.
3. Reboot your phone into recovery.
4. Flash the ZIP file on your SD card.
5. Reboot.
6. Your phone should boot up without a locked screen. Should there be a password or gesture lock screen, don’t panic. Just type in a random password or gesture and your phone should unlock.

Erase your phone (and lock screen) using Android Device Manager

If all the methods above didn’t work out, you need to move on to more drastic measures. In case Android Device Manager is enabled on your phone and unlocking it didn’t work, you can use it to erase all data by selecting the Erase button. Be aware that this will delete all apps, settings and other data on your phone. The good thing is, once the erasing process is done, you can use your phone again (after setting everything up).

Reset your phone to factory settings

If Android Device Manager doesn’t work at all for you, your last resort is to make a factory reset on your device. On Nexus devices, this can be done in recovery mode, for example. Below, we take you through the reset process that work with Nexus devices. If you own a different Android phone, check out this site and look for your manufacturer’s support page.

How to perform a factory reset on your Nexus using recovery mode:

Important note: If your Nexus device is running Android 5.1 or higher, you’re required to enter a Google username and password associated with your device after the factory reset process finishes. This is a security measure to make sure that no stranger is reseting your phone or tablet. If you fail to enter that data, the phone won’t be usable anymore. Really make sure you know your Googel username and password.
No matter what version of Android you’re running, you need to have an internet connection and if you just changed your Google account password, you need to wait at least 72 hours before starting the reset process.

1. Turn off your device.
2. Press the volume down AND power button and keep pressing them. Your device will start up and boot into the bootloader (you should see “Start” and an Android lying on its back).
3. Press the volume down button to go through the different options until you see “Recovery Mode” (pressing volume down twice). Now press the power button to enter recovery mode.
4. You should see an Android on its back and a red exclamation mark.
5. Press and hold the power button, then press and release the volume up button. Now you should see “Android Recovery” written on the top together with some options.
6. By pressing the volume down button, go down the options until “Wipe data/factory reset” is selected. Press the power button to select this option.
7. Using the volume down button again, go down until “Yes – erase all user data” is selected. Make sure you read through the notes above and then, finally, press the power button to start the reset process.
8. Once the process is done, press the power button to select the reboot option. Your device will now reboot and start the inital setup process of your device. That’s it! All you need to do now is to set up everything and restore your data.

You can also check out Google’s official page and follow the instructions there.
As already mentioned earlier, be aware that reseting or erasing your device will delete all data like apps, settings, videos and pictures.